The Unknown Common Fruit Fly

One Of The Most Studied Organisms In Science

The common fruit fly is one of the most scientifically studied model organisms in the world since the early 20^th century, a.k.a. Drosophila melanogaster. It still surprises us.

We Still Know So Little About The Common Fruit Fly

When I read this scientific news article titled “Fruit Flies Force Their Young to Drink Alcohol for Their Own Good” today (2/22/2013), I was stunned to read how much we still do not know about this so intensely studied object of science.

The article informs us that:

1.       “Adult fruit flies detect the [parasitic] wasps [“who are major killers of fruit flies”] by sight, and appear to have much better vision than previously realized Our data indicate that the flies can visually distinguish the relatively small morphological differences between male and female wasps, and between different species of wasps."”

2.       “The fly strains used in the experiments have been bred in the lab for decades. "The flies that we work with have not seen wasps in their lives before, and neither have their ancestors going back hundreds of generations," … "And yet, the flies still recognize these wasps as a danger when they are put in a cage with them."”

3.       “Further experiments showed that the flies are extremely discerning about differences in the wasps. They preferred to lay their eggs in alcohol when female wasps were present, but not if only male wasps were in the cage.”

4.       “Further experimentation showed that the fruit flies can distinguish different species of wasps, and will only choose the alcohol food in response to wasp species that infect larvae, not fly pupae.”

Wow! How do these until now considered to be stupid flies do all that?

Pretense Of Knowledge

Since Socrates we have to be keenly aware of the false pretenses by too many scientists. Global Warming alarmism by scientists who claim they can predict average global temperatures, sea levels etc. over a period of one hundred years from now should be laughed out of their tenured jobs financed by tax payers’ money.